Congolese Militia Is Accused of Atrocities

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Food distribution this month at a camp in Kikwit, Congo, for displaced people who fled the Kasaï region.CreditJohn Wessels/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

By Nick Cumming-Bruce

June 20, 2017

GENEVA — The top United Nations human rights official on Tuesday accused a militia linked to the government of the Democratic Republic of Congo of atrocities, including mass killings, pregnant women cut open and infants hacked with machetes.

The Bana Mura militia “have in the past two months shot dead, hacked or burned to death and mutilated hundreds of villagers, as well as destroying entire villages” in the central Kasaï region, the official, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, told the Human Rights Council in Geneva.

The large scale and horrific nature of the crimes necessitated an independent international investigation, Mr. al-Hussein, the high commissioner for human rights, told diplomats in the council.

In a report that reinforced the United Nations assessment, the Catholic Church in Congo said on Tuesday that 3,383 people had died in violence in the region since October, and that 20 villages had been destroyed, 10 of them by the Congolese Army.

Bringing justice to the region could help to avert crimes elsewhere, Mr. al-Hussein said, but national institutions lacked the means and political will to conduct an investigation to international standards. “Under current conditions, the perpetrators will not be brought to justice,” he said.

The Congolese authorities quickly rejected the idea of “an international commission of inquiry that would work in isolation and parallel to the national judicial bodies as if it had become a null state,” said the government spokesman, Lambert Mende.

The government had agreed to a joint investigation with the United Nations, and Justice Minister Alexis Thambwe Mwamba told journalists in Geneva on Monday that it would not cooperate with or allow access to members of an independent investigation, setting the scene for tough diplomatic bargaining ahead of a council vote on the issue at the end of the week.

Mr. al-Hussein’s statement shed new light on the conflict convulsing the Kasaï region, where the United Nations suspected soldiers and police officers of carrying out summary executions, rapes and other abuses as they fought to contain a rebellion.

The murder in March of two United Nations human rights experts trying to investigate those events had already brought the conflict to the attention of the Security Council. The two experts, Michael J. Sharp, an American, and Zaida Catalán, who had Chilean and Swedish citizenship, disappeared on a mission to investigate reports of mass graves.

Nikki R. Haley, the American ambassador to the United Nations, urged Secretary General António Guterres this month to set up a special investigation into their deaths. On Friday, she said it was “past time” for the Human Rights Council to take decisive action and open an inquiry.

But in the three months since their deaths, the situation has “deteriorated dramatically” in the region, Mr. al-Hussein said. He expressed shock that local authorities had equipped the Bana Mura militia with rifles, machetes and fuel to support their battle with Kamuina Nsapu rebels.

“My team saw children as young as 2 whose limbs had been chopped off; many babies had machete wounds and severe burns,” Mr. al-Hussein said. “One 2-month-old baby seen by my team had been hit by two bullets four hours after birth; the mother was also wounded. At least two pregnant women were sliced open and their fetuses mutilated.”

In one village, Bana Mura fighters attacked a medical center, killing about 90 patients and health workers. Similar attacks appeared to have been carried out in about 20 other villages, he said.

His account drew on testimony collected in the past week from refugees who fled the violence, which has forced more than 1.3 million people from their homes. Human rights officials have documented 42 mass graves in the Kasaï region, and there may be more, Mr. al-Hussein said.